Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, Aaron Jay Kernis achieved recognition as one of the leading composers of his generation while still in his thirties. Since then his ...
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Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, Aaron Jay Kernis achieved recognition as one of the leading composers of his generation while still in his thirties. Since then his eloquent yet accessible style, emphasis on melody, and willingness to engage popular as well as classical forms has brought him widespread acclaim and admiring audiences. This biography offers the first survey of the composer's life and work. Immersed in music by middle school, and later training under Theodore Antoniou, John Adams, Jacob Druckman, and others, Kernis rejected the idea of distancing his work from worldly concerns and composed on political themes. His Second Symphony, from 1991, engaged with the first Gulf War; 1993's Still Moment with Hymn was a reaction to the Bosnian Genocide; and the next year's Colored Field and 1995's Lament and Prayer dealt with the Holocaust. Yet Kernis also used sources as disparate as futurist agitprop and children's games to display humor in his work. The book's analysis addresses not only Kernis's wide range of subjects but also the eclecticism that has baffled critics, analyzing his dedication to synthesis and the themes consistent in his work. The book gives a rare mid-career portrait of a major American cultural figure.Less

Aaron Jay Kernis

Leta E. Miller

Published in print: 2014-08-01

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award, Aaron Jay Kernis achieved recognition as one of the leading composers of his generation while still in his thirties. Since then his eloquent yet accessible style, emphasis on melody, and willingness to engage popular as well as classical forms has brought him widespread acclaim and admiring audiences. This biography offers the first survey of the composer's life and work. Immersed in music by middle school, and later training under Theodore Antoniou, John Adams, Jacob Druckman, and others, Kernis rejected the idea of distancing his work from worldly concerns and composed on political themes. His Second Symphony, from 1991, engaged with the first Gulf War; 1993's Still Moment with Hymn was a reaction to the Bosnian Genocide; and the next year's Colored Field and 1995's Lament and Prayer dealt with the Holocaust. Yet Kernis also used sources as disparate as futurist agitprop and children's games to display humor in his work. The book's analysis addresses not only Kernis's wide range of subjects but also the eclecticism that has baffled critics, analyzing his dedication to synthesis and the themes consistent in his work. The book gives a rare mid-career portrait of a major American cultural figure.

An invention of the Industrial Revolution, the accordion provided the less affluent with an inexpensive, loud, portable, and durable “one-man-orchestra” capable of producing melody, harmony, and bass ...
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An invention of the Industrial Revolution, the accordion provided the less affluent with an inexpensive, loud, portable, and durable “one-man-orchestra” capable of producing melody, harmony, and bass all at once. This book considers the accordion and its myriad forms, from the concertina, button accordion, and piano accordion familiar in European and North American music to the more exotic-sounding South American bandoneón and the sanfoninha. Capturing the instrument's spread and adaptation to many different cultures in North and South America, the chapters illuminate how the accordion factored into power struggles over aesthetic values between elites and working-class people who often were members of immigrant and/or marginalized ethnic communities. Specific histories and cultural contexts discussed include the accordion in Brazil, Argentine tango, accordion traditions in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, cross-border accordion culture between Mexico and Texas, Cajun and Creole identity, working-class culture near Lake Superior, the virtuoso Italian-American and Klezmer accordions, Native American dance music, and American avant-garde.Less

The Accordion in the Americas : Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More!

Published in print: 2012-10-01

An invention of the Industrial Revolution, the accordion provided the less affluent with an inexpensive, loud, portable, and durable “one-man-orchestra” capable of producing melody, harmony, and bass all at once. This book considers the accordion and its myriad forms, from the concertina, button accordion, and piano accordion familiar in European and North American music to the more exotic-sounding South American bandoneón and the sanfoninha. Capturing the instrument's spread and adaptation to many different cultures in North and South America, the chapters illuminate how the accordion factored into power struggles over aesthetic values between elites and working-class people who often were members of immigrant and/or marginalized ethnic communities. Specific histories and cultural contexts discussed include the accordion in Brazil, Argentine tango, accordion traditions in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, cross-border accordion culture between Mexico and Texas, Cajun and Creole identity, working-class culture near Lake Superior, the virtuoso Italian-American and Klezmer accordions, Native American dance music, and American avant-garde.

The music of Alec Wilder (1907–1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, ...
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The music of Alec Wilder (1907–1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, Wilder's musical oeuvre ranged from sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, ballets, and art songs to woodwind quintets, brass quintets, jazz suites, and hundreds of popular songs. Wilder enjoyed a close musical kinship with a wide variety of musicians, including classical conductors such as Erich Leinsdorf, Frederick Fennell, and Gunther Schuller; jazz musicians Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, and Zoot Sims; and popular singers including Frank Sinatra, Mabel Mercer, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett. In this biography and critical investigation of Wilder's music, Wilder's early work as a part-time student at the Eastman School of Music, his ascent through the ranks of the commercial recording industry in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, his turn toward concert music from the 1950s onward, and his devotion late in his life to the study of American popular songs of the first half of the twentieth century are chronicled. The book discusses some of his best-known music, such as the revolutionary octets and songs such as I'll Be Around, While We're Young, and Blackberry Winter, and explains the unique blend of cultivated and vernacular traditions in his singular musical language.Less

Alec Wilder

Philip Lambert

Published in print: 2013-03-01

The music of Alec Wilder (1907–1980) blends several American musical traditions, such as jazz and the American popular song, with classical European forms and techniques. Stylish and accessible, Wilder's musical oeuvre ranged from sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, ballets, and art songs to woodwind quintets, brass quintets, jazz suites, and hundreds of popular songs. Wilder enjoyed a close musical kinship with a wide variety of musicians, including classical conductors such as Erich Leinsdorf, Frederick Fennell, and Gunther Schuller; jazz musicians Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, and Zoot Sims; and popular singers including Frank Sinatra, Mabel Mercer, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett. In this biography and critical investigation of Wilder's music, Wilder's early work as a part-time student at the Eastman School of Music, his ascent through the ranks of the commercial recording industry in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, his turn toward concert music from the 1950s onward, and his devotion late in his life to the study of American popular songs of the first half of the twentieth century are chronicled. The book discusses some of his best-known music, such as the revolutionary octets and songs such as I'll Be Around, While We're Young, and Blackberry Winter, and explains the unique blend of cultivated and vernacular traditions in his singular musical language.

This book employs twenty-five years' worth of rich interviews with black and white Virginians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians to explore the evolution and social uses of dance in each region. It ...
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This book employs twenty-five years' worth of rich interviews with black and white Virginians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians to explore the evolution and social uses of dance in each region. It analyzes how issues as disparate as industrialization around coal, race relations, and the 1970s folk revival profoundly influenced freestyle clogging and other dance forms. The book then reveals how African Americans and Native Americans, as well as European immigrants drawn to the timber mills and coal fields, added to local dance vocabularies. By placing each community in its sociopolitical and economic context, the book explores how the formal and stylistic nuances found in Appalachian dance reflect the beliefs, shared understandings, and experiences of the community at large. The book examines the dynamism of Appalachian dance traditions and the creativity involved in their evolution. Focusing on six dance communities, the book documents the experience of dancing as people have enjoyed it, or continue to enjoy it. It also explores the dance communities' divergent responses to social change, including industrialization, as well as the use of dance for community development.Less

Appalachian Dance : Creativity and Continuity in Six Communities

Susan Eike Spalding

Published in print: 2014-09-01

This book employs twenty-five years' worth of rich interviews with black and white Virginians, Tennesseeans, and Kentuckians to explore the evolution and social uses of dance in each region. It analyzes how issues as disparate as industrialization around coal, race relations, and the 1970s folk revival profoundly influenced freestyle clogging and other dance forms. The book then reveals how African Americans and Native Americans, as well as European immigrants drawn to the timber mills and coal fields, added to local dance vocabularies. By placing each community in its sociopolitical and economic context, the book explores how the formal and stylistic nuances found in Appalachian dance reflect the beliefs, shared understandings, and experiences of the community at large. The book examines the dynamism of Appalachian dance traditions and the creativity involved in their evolution. Focusing on six dance communities, the book documents the experience of dancing as people have enjoyed it, or continue to enjoy it. It also explores the dance communities' divergent responses to social change, including industrialization, as well as the use of dance for community development.

A publication of the American Bach Society, this book pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. This volume is a collection of groundbreaking essays ...
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A publication of the American Bach Society, this book pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. This volume is a collection of groundbreaking essays exploring various aspects of Johann Sebastian Bach's organ-related activities. Bach's report on Johann Scheibe's organ at St. Paul's Church in Leipzig is reconsidered. The likely provenance and purpose of a collection of chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden is clarified. The ways various independent trio movements served Bach as an artist and teacher is investigated. The origins of concerted Bach cantata movements are sought, spotlighting the organ and proposing family trees of both parent works and offspring. Finally, the book provides a broad cultural frame for such pieces and notes how their components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ's intimation of Heaven. The book provides an eighteenth-century context for Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas with obbligato organ by showing how their various components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ: namely, its intimation of Heaven.Less

Bach Perspectives, Volume 10 : Bach and the Organ

Published in print: 2016-04-15

A publication of the American Bach Society, this book pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. This volume is a collection of groundbreaking essays exploring various aspects of Johann Sebastian Bach's organ-related activities. Bach's report on Johann Scheibe's organ at St. Paul's Church in Leipzig is reconsidered. The likely provenance and purpose of a collection of chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden is clarified. The ways various independent trio movements served Bach as an artist and teacher is investigated. The origins of concerted Bach cantata movements are sought, spotlighting the organ and proposing family trees of both parent works and offspring. Finally, the book provides a broad cultural frame for such pieces and notes how their components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ's intimation of Heaven. The book provides an eighteenth-century context for Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas with obbligato organ by showing how their various components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ: namely, its intimation of Heaven.

This addition to the Bach Perspectives series offers a counter-narrative to the isolated genius status that J. S. Bach and his music currently enjoy. The book contextualizes Bach by examining the ...
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This addition to the Bach Perspectives series offers a counter-narrative to the isolated genius status that J. S. Bach and his music currently enjoy. The book contextualizes Bach by examining the output, reputation, and compositional practices of his contemporaries in Germany whose work was widely played and enjoyed in his time, including Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Gottlieb Muffat, and Johann Adolf Scheibe. Chapters place Bach and his work in relation to his peers, examining avenues of composition they took while he did not and showing how differing treatments of the same subjects or texts resulted in markedly different compositional results and legacies. By looking closely at how Bach's contemporaries addressed the tasks and challenges of their time, this project provides a more nuanced view of the musical world of Bach's time while revealing in more specific terms than ever how and why Bach's own music remains fresh and compelling.Less

Published in print: 2013-12-01

This addition to the Bach Perspectives series offers a counter-narrative to the isolated genius status that J. S. Bach and his music currently enjoy. The book contextualizes Bach by examining the output, reputation, and compositional practices of his contemporaries in Germany whose work was widely played and enjoyed in his time, including Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Gottlieb Muffat, and Johann Adolf Scheibe. Chapters place Bach and his work in relation to his peers, examining avenues of composition they took while he did not and showing how differing treatments of the same subjects or texts resulted in markedly different compositional results and legacies. By looking closely at how Bach's contemporaries addressed the tasks and challenges of their time, this project provides a more nuanced view of the musical world of Bach's time while revealing in more specific terms than ever how and why Bach's own music remains fresh and compelling.

This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the ...
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This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. These performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. The book's author sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. The book reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: for example, prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on “the Library's recording machine” in a rendering of Rock Island Line. The profiles and abundant photos in the book bring to life largely unheralded individuals—domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners—whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, “amplifying tradition's gifts,” the book shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.Less

The Beautiful Music All Around Us : Field Recordings and the American Experience

Stephen Wade

Published in print: 2012-08-15

This book presents the rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. These performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. The book's author sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. The book reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: for example, prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on “the Library's recording machine” in a rendering of Rock Island Line. The profiles and abundant photos in the book bring to life largely unheralded individuals—domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners—whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, “amplifying tradition's gifts,” the book shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.

This book explores the transformations undergone by the residents of a Midwestern town when they step out on the dance floor for the very first time. The book uses sensitive fieldwork as well as the ...
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This book explores the transformations undergone by the residents of a Midwestern town when they step out on the dance floor for the very first time. The book uses sensitive fieldwork as well as the author's own immersion in ballroom culture to lead readers into a community that springs up around ballroom dance. It demonstrates how the contemporary performance of ballroom dance among amateurs generates feelings of positive personal transformation, of becoming beautiful. The book also discusses the dance hall as a social space where disparate groups come together to move in synchrony, along with the ways in which race, class, and gender converge in ballroom dancing. The result is a portrait of the real people who connect with others, change themselves, and join a world that foxtrots to its own rules, conventions, and rewards. The author's eye for revealing, humorous detail adds warmth and depth to discussions around critical perspectives on the experiences the dance hall provides, the nature of partnership and connection, and the notion of how dancing allows anyone to become beautiful. The book also considers the relationship between aesthetic values and becoming beautiful.Less

Becoming Beautiful : Ballroom Dance in the American Heartland

Joanna Bosse

Published in print: 2015-02-15

This book explores the transformations undergone by the residents of a Midwestern town when they step out on the dance floor for the very first time. The book uses sensitive fieldwork as well as the author's own immersion in ballroom culture to lead readers into a community that springs up around ballroom dance. It demonstrates how the contemporary performance of ballroom dance among amateurs generates feelings of positive personal transformation, of becoming beautiful. The book also discusses the dance hall as a social space where disparate groups come together to move in synchrony, along with the ways in which race, class, and gender converge in ballroom dancing. The result is a portrait of the real people who connect with others, change themselves, and join a world that foxtrots to its own rules, conventions, and rewards. The author's eye for revealing, humorous detail adds warmth and depth to discussions around critical perspectives on the experiences the dance hall provides, the nature of partnership and connection, and the notion of how dancing allows anyone to become beautiful. The book also considers the relationship between aesthetic values and becoming beautiful.

This book critically examines the intersections of race and music in the multifaceted genre of opera. A diverse cross-section of scholars places well-known operas (Porgy and Bess, Aida, Treemonisha) ...
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This book critically examines the intersections of race and music in the multifaceted genre of opera. A diverse cross-section of scholars places well-known operas (Porgy and Bess, Aida, Treemonisha) alongside lesser-known works such as Frederick Delius's Koanga, William Grant Still's Blue Steel, and Clarence Cameron White's Ouanga! to reveal a new historical context for re-imagining race and blackness in opera. The volume brings a wide-ranging, theoretically informed, interdisciplinary approach to questions about how blackness has been represented in these operas, issues surrounding characterization of blacks, interpretation of racialized roles by blacks and whites, controversies over race in the theater and the use of blackface, and extensions of blackness along the spectrum from grand opera to musical theatre and film.Less

Blackness in Opera

Published in print: 2012-03-01

This book critically examines the intersections of race and music in the multifaceted genre of opera. A diverse cross-section of scholars places well-known operas (Porgy and Bess, Aida, Treemonisha) alongside lesser-known works such as Frederick Delius's Koanga, William Grant Still's Blue Steel, and Clarence Cameron White's Ouanga! to reveal a new historical context for re-imagining race and blackness in opera. The volume brings a wide-ranging, theoretically informed, interdisciplinary approach to questions about how blackness has been represented in these operas, issues surrounding characterization of blacks, interpretation of racialized roles by blacks and whites, controversies over race in the theater and the use of blackface, and extensions of blackness along the spectrum from grand opera to musical theatre and film.

Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of ...
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Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. The book traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet—a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others—to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. The book's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, the book is a study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.Less

Blue Rhythm Fantasy : Big Band Jazz Arranging in the Swing Era

John Wriggle

Published in print: 2016-08-01

Behind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music's unsung heroes: the arrangers. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of New York City's vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. The book traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet—a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others—to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. The book's insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in the African American press, and interviews with participants, the book is a study of the arranger during this dynamic era of American music history.

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